


cupiditas

by spookykingdomstarlight



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, Blood, Dark, Demonic Possession, Extra Treat, F/M, Fade to Black, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Imposter, Lyrium Addiction, Post-Champions of the Just, Red Lyrium, Red Templar Cullen, Vignettes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-31
Updated: 2016-10-31
Packaged: 2018-08-28 04:07:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8431267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spookykingdomstarlight/pseuds/spookykingdomstarlight
Summary: “We’ll save Thedas,” the Herald tells him as he surveys what few troops he has. They will need more, stronger, better troops. They’ll need templars. From somewhere. They’ll need lyrium. Easier to get. “And Thedas will be his.”“His?” Cullen asks, her voice difficult to hear over the sound of steel, the grunts of exertion as his men and women train before them.“Ours,” she replies, beatific. “Thedas will be ours. It will be safe.”





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tuesday](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tuesday/gifts).



She tries to offer him a vial, red and pulsing and alive. He’d known before she even stepped into the war room what she had and had wanted to bar the door against her. It calls to him even through the bubbled, poorly-blown glass, a window cut into the leather sleeve around it, there only, it seems, to show him what it is. “You cannot expect me to—” he says. The words lodge in his throat, form only reluctantly on his tongue. His mouth dries and his mind clamors and his hands tremble and he wants nothing more than to take it from her. “ _Herald_.”

“I’m sorry,” she says and there is something different in her tone, the flash of her eyes. He knows her and this—this is not the Herald. But it _is_ her. It would be ridiculous to think otherwise with her standing before him.

“It’s difficult enough with—with…” But he’s a terrible liar. He hasn’t yet told her what he’s done, how he’s clawed and fought his way to sobriety. She hadn’t known. She has every right to bring this to him. The Inquisition has so few resources. Who else here in Haven is better suited to its study? “You should not have brought this back from Therinfal.”

“Should I not?” she says. “I’m afraid I didn’t have the luxury of choice.”

Cullen’s brows furrow, his gaze shadowing. Instinct—an instinct he wishes he hadn’t spent so much of his life cultivating—tells him to strike her down. That she is a threat. His eyes flick to the wicked looking staff strapped to her back, ominous to him now. Before it had been nothing more than a tool to him. Or perhaps she’s gotten a new one? It looks a little different.

“Cullen, we need to know what’s going on.”

“What we need is to keep this as far from the templars you’ve brought back. Are you mad? They’ll—” It isn’t truly the other templars he is thinking of, but she doesn’t need to know that. He’d like to remain in her good graces a little longer. Though if this meeting goes poorly, that time may come much sooner than he’d expected. “No good can come of this.”

“There are no templars,” she replies. “They would not come.”

He braces against the war table, all of his weight resting on his palms as he rocks forward. “Tell me.”

The Herald smiles, grim. It’s not a happy smile, nor a pretty one, and she has smiled more than her fair share at Cullen in their time together. He would know. She tosses the lyrium at him. Flinching, he backs away, the vial falling onto a sheaf of papers he’s yet to review. It rolls toward him and it takes all of his self-control to avoid falling upon it, snatch it up and drink its contents. He considers sweeping it to the floor and smashing it beneath his boot heel. Half of him regrets that the stopper hadn’t fallen off the top to spill the liquid across the map. “They’ve been turned. They’d be useless to our cause.”

Cullen’s heart beats furiously, anger washing over him, pointless and impotent. “Useless,” he says, as bland as he can manage.

“I can be more precise if you would like, but I had thought to spare your feelings. They weren’t well, Cullen.”

 _Weren’t_. Cullen draws his hand across his mouth, the rasp of stubble prickling against his fingertips. “No, that’s—unnecessary.” And yet, he cannot shake the feeling that the Herald should have tried, should have brought them back. If anyone could save them…

The Herald has already accomplished so much. Why not this?

And yet she has brought this abominable substance to Haven, to _Cullen_. And for what? What can he do? Truly?

“Tell me how to fix this, Cullen,” she says, tone brooking no argument.

“You know what you’re asking of me.”

She shakes her head. “Only if there’s no other way.” He is not relieved by this assertion.

Before she leaves, he would swear he _sees_ the malevolence rolling off of her, hatred in her eyes. Avarice. Need. He shakes his head, tries to clear it. A foolish notion, that. The mission had clearly gone wrong. Of course she’s behaving differently right now. _It’s just the lyrium_.

Once she’s gone, he reaches for the vial, sweaty and aching already. For it. For… For things he cannot have.

He’s not sure how he’ll do this. But he’ll try for her.

*

He ignores the drumming pulse of the lyrium’s song, the way it thrums in time with his blood and makes him run hot and cold.

He, too, ignores the green shade of the Herald’s eyes. He’d been certain before they were another color. But now… now he’s not so sure. He’s made mistakes in his life, so many of them that this one doesn’t even register.

At least they are not red, not the way Cullen sometimes thinks his own must be when he passes a polished surface, red flashing in his vision.

Red, red, always red.

*

He hasn’t even _taken_ the damned lyrium. It shouldn’t—

And yet, it does. He feels it moving inside of him, the hard edges of it scraping beneath against his bones, tearing him to pieces. Sometimes he looks down, surprised to see that his skin is still intact and scratches where he think a wound ought to be. It eases the pressure in his mind.

At least for a while.

—it shouldn’t be doing anything to him at all.

*

The Herald comes to his quarters, late, presses him to the bed. Kisses him. It’s the first time he feels normal since her failure at Therinfal Redoubt and he takes advantage of it, pulling her close, moaning into her mouth, asking no questions when they part for breath. She tastes of nothing at all and she makes no noise as she thrusts against him and it’s as perfect as he can imagine himself deserving under the circumstance.

“You’re looking well, Cullen,” she says when they’ve finished, patting him on his shoulder as she climbs to her feet. Her touch is icy, burns like a brand, and lingers long after she’s gone.

He doesn’t go back to sleep.

He thinks instead of red flowers and has no way of knowing why.

*

He takes the lyrium. He has no choice.

*

And the Herald brings him more.

“Where are you getting it?” he asks, rolling the vial between his palms, eager, but not wanting to appear so.

She doesn’t answer him in words, but the smile she offers—that’s quite enough answer for him. He needn’t worry. He can do what she needs him to do so long as she keeps looking at him like that.

*

A pain begins to trouble him in his right shoulder the same day the Herald orders Chancellor Roderick imprisoned. For Haven, she claims. For the Inquisition. Cullen’s not so sure, but he doesn’t argue. And neither does anyone else. Roderick has been disruptive. And without the templars to help with the rift, they have bigger problems than appeasing the Chantry by suffering its most foolish representative.

Why no one else questions it, Cullen doesn’t think to ask.

*

“We’ll save Thedas,” the Herald tells him as he surveys what few troops he has. They will need more, stronger, better troops. They’ll need templars. From somewhere. They’ll need lyrium. Easier to get. “And Thedas will be his.”

“His?” Cullen asks, her voice difficult to hear over the sound of steel, the grunts of exertion as his men and women train before them.

“Ours,” she replies, beatific. “Thedas will be ours. It will be safe.”

*

Blood stains his shirt, coats his fingers when he stretches, reaching to press them against the wound on his back. It’s hot to the touch and fire lances through him, almost bringing him to his knees, when he does so much as move.

There is a cut on his fingertip when he inspects it, his chest rising and falling in ragged, pained bursts. Panic threatens to consume him, drowns out the hum of the lyrium for the briefest of moments before he stumbles toward his kit, hunched forward, his entire being hungry for the only source of power he has left—the only thing that will bring the Herald’s vision to bear. She trusted him with this. He can do what he has to do for her in return.

Relief flows through him as he ingests the vial’s contents and when he stands fully upright, he hardly notices the stiffness with which he must now move, the creaking in his bones, as if something brittle has taken up residence inside of him, a crystalline lattice with enough sharp edges to cut him if he’s not careful. A foreign thing, an invader, a presence that wants to reshape him into more and less than he is.

He is careful; he is wary.

He doesn’t know it will not be enough.

And he doesn’t know that the Herald does not care.


End file.
